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The FreePint Bar is generously sponsored by Dow Jones Factiva.
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| Start New | Message Index | Flat View |
| Third FreePint Daily Dispatch from SLA, New York |
| Author: | Annabel Colley |
| Date: | Thursday, 12th Jun 2003 03:02 |
| Views: | 3,619 (excluding Digests and RSS feeds) |
| Category: | FreePint | | URL: | http://www.freepint.com/go/b24115 |
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Dispatch Number Three from New York -- Annabel Colley
Special Libraries Association Conference
Supported by Factiva, a Dow Jones & Reuters Company
Thanks for all the feedback so far about how you are enjoying my dispatches.
Attending a large conference is quite tiring at times but there are lots of moments that really do make it worthwhile. It was particularly nice for FreePint to receive a round of applause when we were mentioned by Gary Price in his session on Web tools.
EMERGING THEMES
Tuesday’s theme was Future Directions
Visions of the Future
Futurist and author Stewart Brand, co-founder of the WELL (Whole Earth
‘Lectronic Link), a computer teleconference system for the San Francisco Bay Area. He is author of many books including "Two Cybernetic Frontiers", “The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT” and “The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility”. I caught up with delegates as they came out of the
keynote session to find out what key thoughts and ideas they would take away from Brand’s session. Here are just some of them:
"The major project to digitise the Library of Congress and the challenges of archiving ‘born digital’ materials was my key interest"
“I thought the awareness of different parts of society and the different speeds at which they move - the quick pace of fashion and fads, and the slow pace of changing culture and governance - was fascinating"
"As a reader of his books I love his optimism of the future. Sci-fi writers are often dark, but he isn't"
"I use his approaches and ideas in my work in scenario planning."
"I think it is interesting what he said about the Internet Wayback machine
http://www.internetarchive.org , it being a glimpse of what the future holds in terms of Web archiving."
NEW YORK HAPPENINGS
William Hann and I enjoyed a great evening out last night. We started out at a reception at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art and then moved on to the News Division suite in the Hilton, where we attended the silent auction of promotional goods from newspaper and broadcasting organisations. Like true Brits from over the pond we came away with two large Newsweek branded tea cups which we promptly put to use with a vast cup of tea each, at midnight in the hotel lounge.
This networking and partying New York style is all very well, but the next time you are in New York and buy a fake Gucci handbag or D&G suit, just watch out -- you may be caught by new technology. Read on and find out why.
NEW TECHNOLOGY
An eagerly anticipated session on wearable and mobile technology from staff of the MIT Media Laboratory was cancelled, but never one to miss an opportunity, FreePint chatted to the rather knowledgeable delegates from the IT division about the topic anyway.
Many thanks to the merry band of delegates - especially the knowledgeable Bob Koechley of Promega Corporation who gave me their views on exciting new technologies to watch out for …
"Thumb drives" -- Tiny portable hard drives that can be dropped into your handbag or briefcase.
“Wireless technology”
"Roll up soft technology" -- LCD screens incorporated into t-shirts – interesting application for advertising
“360 degree tele-emersion” -- Virtual reality simulation where it will be possible to enter a virtual world and experience statistical information, for example, graphically
“Radio Frequency Identification” -- Used on clothing labels this is like an extension of the supermarket loyalty cards. Chips are built into the labels with information all about customers. This also came up in my interview with Stephen Abram today; the full interview will appear in a forthcoming FreePint.
“DNA coded clothing” -- But my absolute favourite, and so relevant to New
York as designer shopping capital of the world, is the research around the ability for top designers to encode their own DNA (via a drop of blood) to indelibly mark their products and stop mass-produced fakes.
The role of Geographical imaging systems in the aftermath of September 11 was a fascinating account by GIS professionals including Wendy Dorf of the NYC Department of Environmental Protection. She supported NYC emergency management at Ground Zero by gathering datasets about the deep infrastructure below the towers (water, gas, engineering, electricity, sewers). The datasets varied so much that GIS infrastructure mapping was essential to integrate the data and ultimately aid the rescue operations.
SEEN AND HEARD
Janice La Chance, new Executive Director of the SLA, finding out how much fun librarians can be as she suite-hopped between the legal- and news-division open-house functions.
Two ladies from the Library of Congress and the IMF Library who fell on me to say, “We absolutely love FreePint please just keep ‘em coming”
WEB TOOLS AND TIPS TO TAKE AWAY
Gary Price and Genie Tyburski’s session on Web tools threw up the following gems:
Websitewatcher.com -- Tracks small and large changes to websites, enabling you to monitor them
Samspade.org -- Investigate the origin of email and domain names
TinyURL.com -- Compress long addresses – preventing the problem of broken links or quoting long URLs over the phone.
Rocketinfo -- New news-search engine
Spybot.com -- Scan your hard drive for problem programmes and cookies automatically put on your hard drive when you download material
Scopeware.com -- Index your entire hard drive and view as a card file by document types.
STOP PRESS
‘Special Libraries Association’ Name to Remain.
The choice not to change the name to either ‘SLA’ (initials only) OR
‘Information Professionals International’, but to keep the original name, shows member commitment to tradition.
6,800 members attended the New York conference. A total of 890 votes were cast in the naming vote. The bylaw motion to change the name was defeated by just 73 votes.
I interviewed Stephen Abram, chair of the three-year long branding task force, and Cindy Hill, incoming President, on their reactions but also on a number of other interesting issues. Full interviews, including insight into their roles within their own organisations and their view on new and emerging technologies, will appear shortly in the FreePint Newsletter.
We’re taking lots of photos too (and gathering copies from the official show photographers) and so look out for the photo dispatch, coming soon.
Annabel Colley
FreePint, New York
Next Dispatch (4): http://www.freepint.com/go/b24124
Dispatch Index: http://www.freepint.com/go/b24333
Previous Dispatch (2): http://www.freepint.com/go/b24102
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| Start New | |
| Topic |
Author |
Date |
ID |
 | Third FreePint Daily Dispatch from SLA, New York | | Dispatch Number Three from New York -- Annabel Colley
Special Libraries Association Conference
Supported by Factiva, a Dow Jones & ... |
|
Annabel Colley |
12/06/03 03:02 |
24115 |
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